In Dublin there’s an old jail that’s been turned into a museum. The place is so archetypal that it’s been used several times as a movie set, for its dank hallways and big atrium surrounded by cells. They have you go into a cell and close the door; you see a black oval shape painted around the tiny window, so it looks like a big eye is staring at you.

And this was a progressive prison, as distinct from the kind where men and women were thrown together into one room.

A big, intelligent, warm-hearted man was our guide in the Kilmainham Jail Museum. He seemed genuinely empathetic to the suffering of the prisoners, who ranged from republican political rebels to children who stole food during the potato famine. Around every corner, he had a new story of misery and inhumanity: you’d get one thin blanket at the beginning of your sentence and one candle every 14 days. At the height of the famine, people were flocking to get arrested so that they could get a mouthful of prison gruel.

Although it was August when I visited, it was cool and rainy in Dublin, and I, already sick with a cold, hated to step out into the courtyard. But our guide’s stories out there chilled my soul more than the weather was chilling my flesh.

There were several crosses at one end of the courtyard, and a lone one at the other end.

Among the group of crosses, one represented the life and death of a man who had a sweetheart. The authorities allowed them to be married in a midnight Mass, and then they were separated until dawn. (The museum has a photograph of her holding a little black cat.)

As day broke, the couple were given 10 minutes to spend together in the company of an officer who held a clock and announced, “One minute is up… Two minutes are up…”

When their time was over, the new bride was made to leave the prison, but the story has it that she waited outside the gate until she heard the gunshot.

The single cross at the other end of the grim space represents the execution of a rebel who had been injured and developed gangrene in his leg and was going to die anyway. But he had been sentenced to die by shooting.

Nurses and doctors bundled him into an ambulance and he was tied to a chair at the opposite end of the courtyard from the usual place of execution, because he couldn’t stand up to be shot and it was too much bother to carry him that far from the gate.

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At the other end of the spectrum of experience, after I got home from Ireland it was time for the Blessing of the Animals, one of the most gentle and humane moments I experience in the whole year.

This year there was a little beehive, and a costumed pug in a Radio Flyer wagon. I blessed a couple of collars for cats who didn’t prefer to attend.

Near the end of the individual blessings, a woman came to me with two dogs, and after I had thanked God for their companionship and loyalty and prayed for their safety, health, and happiness, the woman said, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

I cocked my head in response: “How may I try to help?”

She was calm and clear. “I just had to have my cat put to sleep. I was going to bring him here first, and then to the vet’s, but he was just too sick. He’s out in my car. Could you say a prayer for him?”

My heart nearly burst. “Of course,” I said.

As we walked over to her car, the woman told me that her husband, too, had died just recently.

The cat’s body had been sealed in a little white box. As I lay my hands on it, I prayed to God to “please take back this little soul that you created.” When I was finished, the woman fished in her purse and found a picture of the cat for me to see.

• • •

My husband and I recently traveled to New Haven to hear a concert by Jesse Winchester, a singer, guitarist, and songwriter we have admired since 1972. Jesse has recently met and married the love of his life, and at this concert he sang a song to her, to the effect that if he dies first, he will sit on the opposite shore of the Jordan with his back to Paradise and draw pictures in the sand until she joins him.

• • •

Death is such a mystery. It wrests out of our hearts cruelty and tears, mercy and ice, our horrid fears and the longings that give us life.

The Rev. Ellen C. Chahey is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ. She lives in Hyannis.